Metropolitan Building

The Metropolitan Building is an eight-story office block at the northwest corner of Grand Boulevard and Olive Street, faced in cream-white glazed brick and banded with panels of yellow-gold glazed brick. Each floor carries a frieze of geometric brickwork — diamonds and blocks worked in gold against the white — between paired dark-framed windows, and gold-brick surrounds outline the openings. A dentiled white terra-cotta cornice runs below a top-floor arcade of small square windows. The ground floor sits on a dark granite base, its entablature incised METROPOLITAN, above the storefronts along the street.

The Metropolitan Building was completed in 1907 in Grand Center, an eight-story office building designed by Mauran, Russell & Garden and built for doctors' offices. It was clad, unusually, in white glazed brick with gold accents. By the time Landmarks Association nominated the Midtown Historic District to the National Register in the late 1970s, the building stood nearly vacant. It was later rehabilitated as the Metropolitan Artists Lofts, with apartments above and a street-level gallery for its resident artists along the Grand Boulevard storefronts.